Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia and Fight Direction by RC-Annie. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Contemporaneous Ensemble conducted by William Cole. All images taken by Paula Court. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal Opera production (directed by Ted Huffman) over eight days in the Baruch Performing Arts Centre. The performances were sold out, and the response from the press was incredible. Here is a small selection.
“there was no denying the sledgehammer power of Philip Venables’s “4.48 Psychosis” […] Venables’s bent for politically charged topics is all the more conspicuous because of his frequent use of speaking voices, which are coördinated with rapid-fire instrumental lines. Yet he is also a composer of considerable refinement, who can weave ethereal textures from a few carefully chosen pitches. This combination of savagery and economy makes for an arrestingly original musical personality.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“In his opera, which had its premiere with the Royal Opera in London in 2016, the composer Philip Venables has found in Kane’s material a landscape of iciness and sensitivity, in which speaking and singing flow into one another with uncanny ease. […] All in all, this “4.48” avoids neither the text’s moments of pitch-black humor nor its passages of luminous air; it doesn’t prettify Kane, nor does it make her brutality unendurable. Elegantly ferocious, it is this unclassifiable play as music.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“Despite violence, Venables gives a rendering of depression that accentuates tenacity, intelligence, and humanity.” — Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen.
“Venables takes full advantage of the play’s meandering stream-of-consciousness in a searing, kaleidoscopic score which foregrounds the lyricism and brutality of Kane’s text. Venables’ score has an unremitting intensity, endowing Kane’s play with a visceral impact so often missing from theatrical productions of the work. Textual contrasts are pushed to extremes in a score that alternates between Artaudian delirium and baroque detachment. […] Ultimately, 4.48 Psychosis is a heart-stopping, utterly devastating night at the opera, not to be missed.” — Callum John Blackmore, Parterre Box
I have been awarded a month-long residency at the Watermill Center in the Hamptons, NY, in January 2019. I will take up the residency with Ted Huffman, and together we will spend the month working on our new opera, Denis & Katya. The Watermill Center was founded by director Robert Wilson to provide space for visual artists, theatre makers, composers and dancers to develop new work. Immediately after the residency we travel to Philadelphia for the first round of workshops on the new opera.
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of new opera and music theatre, and their January showcase festival takes place in venues across the city during the first two weeks of January each year. 4.48 Psychosis will run for six performances at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in midtown, and will feature the cast from the Royal Opera company, who revived the opera in London earlier this year. Tickets for the performances will go on sale on 1st October, here.
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusionsand Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series. It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other composers Sarah Nemtsov, Lee Hyla and Helga Arias Parra also featured. I’m really excited that the spoken part in Numbers 91–95 will be done by singer Sarah Dacey, from Juice Ensemble, whom I’ve known for a long while but not properly had the chance to work with. I’ll be at the concert, and giving a short, free, pre-concert interview with Tim Rutherford-Johnson.
Venables plays Bartók, my new violin concerto written for Pekka Kuusisto, received a warm response at its premiere at the BBC Proms on Friday 17th August, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. A huge thanks to Pekka, Sakari, the orchestra, Ian Dearden and Jot Davies for their roles in the performance.
Press reviews were generally good, including a 5-star review in Bachtrack (“something intensely moving, profound even, in the way the work unfolded”) and 4 stars in the Guardian (“virtuosity and substance”). I also wrote a piece for the Guardian in the run up to the premiere about the providence of the piece and the life of Rudolf Botta, the main protagonist of the piece – you can read it here.
The BBC Radio 3 broadcast is still on BBC iPlayer until Sunday 17th September. The preamble and interviews to the concerto begin around 18’30” and the performance (with the introduction by Pekka, which is part of the piece) at 27’30”.
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there have been have been outstanding. The performances took place at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2018. Here are some links to some of the reviews:
The BBC Proms announced their 2018 Festival a few weeks ago, including a new violin concerto that I’m writing for Pekka Kuusisto and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The piece will be performed in the Proms on 17th August 2018, conducted by Sakari Oramo. It is kind of ‘radio music theatre’ with the violin as the main character, and the piece explores my own journey through learning the violin, to a moment when I met my teacher’s teacher, the hungarian violinist, teacher and refugee, Rudolf Botta. It is all framed round nine short Hungarian folk dances or miniatures, collected or composed by Bartók, hence the double credit of the piece: Venables/Bartók – Venables plays Bartók.
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah Kane’s play by Durs Grünbein. The premiere will take place on 26th April 2019, and there will be other events surrounding it, including a portrait concert of some of my chamber work. I’m excited to get working on the new score for the german version this summer – because of the tight knitting of text and music, about 40% of the opera needs to be re-scored. More information about the performances are here.
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are:
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, Klaviertrio im Geiste, Numbers 76–80, Numbers 91-95, Metamorphoses after Britten, Illusions.
The disc features David Hoyle, the London Sinfonietta, Phoenix Piano Trio, Ligeti Quartet, Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic, Nick Blackburn, Melinda Maxwell, Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers and Ashley Mercer, conducted by Richard Baker.
My ongoing collaboration with performer and composer Laura Bowler and director Patrick Eakin Young is being shown as a ‘work in progress’ at Manchester Opera Project on 27th July at Halle St Peter’s in Manchester. This project has been developed during two residency weeks at Snape Maltings courtesy of Aldeburgh Music, and it weaves together verbatim transcripts of the accounts of female rape survivors with other texts about rape culture and the patriarchy. It’s a difficult project and has been challenging for us to navigate, but we are making good progress. This showing will be about 20 minutes, and will be alongside other new monodramas by Ailís Ní Ríain and Michael Rose/Tom Jenks. We are really grateful to PRS for Music Foundation and Arts Council England for supporting this project.
My collaboration with David Hoyle for Manchester International Festival played every hour of every day on Canal Street through the whole of MIF 2017 – a total of 204 plays! It was recorded with the brass of Manchester Camerata and David, and then made into a sound-art installation across seven speakers along the main strip of Canal Street in the heart of Manchester’s Gay Village. The piece was a tribute to the community, but also touched on themes of assimilation, military industrialisation and gender conformity. The installation was part of MIF’s Music for a Busy City, including other pieces by Olga Neuwirth, Matthew Herbert, Anna Meredith, Huang Ruo and Mohammed Fairouz.
Philip Venables’ equally astonishing Canal Street installation also utilises the number of speakers to maximum effect. It is a riveting piece of hi-tech theatre driven by music that is at once menacing, mournful and rousing. Venables’ treatment of the utterly charming David Hoyle’s provocative part polemic, part poem had me rushing from speaker to speaker to try to take it all in.
Huge thanks to Manchester International Festival and Producer Tom Higham – a fantastic team to work with.
In conversation with Sara Mohr-Pietsch at the Royal Festival Hall.
Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation New Music Biennial. The following week it was performed at the Southbank Centre – my Royal Festival Hall debut! The audience response was wonderful, and the press too. The Guardian said:
Philip Venables’ collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, however, is astonishingly powerful, with Hoyle’s garishly made-up face delivering a rant about everything from elections and gender to sodomy and revolution, precisely edited to Venables’ score with its echoes of expressionist music theatre and Weimar cabaret. Scabrous, fierce, and sometimes very funny, it’s a perfect fusion of music and image.
The BBC covered the events, and the piece was broadcast along with an interview with me and Sara Mohr-Pietsch on 15th July on Hear and Now (albeit without the video component, of course). The broadcast can be heard here on iPlayer – my segment is from 1h42 onwards.
Illusions was recorded on 10th July in the studio for NMC , for my forthcoming album next year. Huge thanks to the London Sinfonietta, Richard Baker and Sound Intermedia for wonderful performances, and to the PRSF for their support.
Performance of Illusions at the Royal Festival Hall
4.48 Psychosishas been shortlisted for the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best Opera 2017. The awards ceremony is on 9th July at the Savoy Hotel in London, and covers all art forms from opera, dance, classical music, theatre, literature, comedy, television, pop music film and visual arts. The awards will be presented by Melvyn Bragg. The other shortlisted productions for the opera award are Glyndebourne Youth Opera for Nothing (David Bruce/Glyn Maxwell) and Opera North for their Ring Cycle. Fingers crossed!
I’m delighted to announce that I won the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Large Scale Composition for 4.48 Psychosis. The award ceremony took place at The Brewery Hotel in London, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The award was one of two composition awards (the other for chamber music, which went to Rebecca Saunders for Skin). 4.48 Psychosis was also nominated in the Best Opera category, which was awarded to Opera North for their Ring cycle. So far two awards won out of four nominations…!
I have just signed an exclusive publishing contract with Ricordi London / Universal Music. They will publish some existing works such as 4.48 Psychosis, The Revenge of Miguel Cottoand numbers 76–80: tristan und isolde, and my future works for the next three years. They have a fantastic team based at Universal Music in Berlin, and it’s a great honour to be joining an incredible roster of composers including Enno Poppe, Olga Neuwirth, Georg Friedrich Haas, Salvatore Sciarrino, Rolf Hind, Liza Lim… and Puccini. It’s so great to be with a house that has such strengths in music theatre. More information on Ricordi’s press release here.
4.48 Psychosishas been shortlisted in two categories for the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2017. The opera was nominate for the Large-Scale Composition award and the Opera & Music Theatre award. Both shortlists, and the rest of the nominees, are quite a formidable bunch, including Rebecca Saunders, Enno Poppe, Liza Lim, James Ehnes, Pierre Laurent-Aimard and Andrew Gourlay. The announcement was made on BBC Radio 3, and the awards ceremony will be on 9th May. Fingers crossed!
Manchester International Festival 2017 was launched today, including the Music for a Busy City. This project takes six composers out of the concert hall and into the city of Manchester, making music for public spaces through which people pass every day. I will be making a sound installation for the heart of the gay village, Canal Street, and it will feature the voice of performance artist David Hoyle. The other artists are Matthew Herbert, Anna Meredith, Huang Ruo, Olga Neuwirth and Mohammed Fairouz. Come along in the summer and check it out – all six installations around the city will be on loop every hour through the 3-week festival.
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at 
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via 
